The $58,000 TV bill: When DirecTV sued O.J. Simpson for piracy - Ars Technica
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Imagine the life of a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida back in 2005. On Monday, you hold a hearing on contested legislation. On Tuesday, you rule in a national security case. But on Wednesday—bah, there’s just something about Wednesday—you have to spend a sunny day indoors, reading technical affidavits on satellite TV bootloaders, electronic countermeasures, and smartcard voltage dips that take place 522 clock ticks after startup.
Tedious, really. Not the kind of thing one seeks a federal judgeship for. A satellite TV piracy case. Against some random dude in Miami.
You flip through the papers on your desk with a sigh but stop when you see the case caption. DirecTV is not suing some random dude in Miami. It’s suing someone famous, perhaps one of the most famous people in the world now, thanks in large part to that murder charge—though of course he had beaten the rap. Still, a celebrity of his stature surely has the money to pay for satellite TV?
Wednesday promises to be more interesting than usual. You settle into your leather chair and begin reading the filings in DirecTV, Inc. v. O.J. Simpson.
O.J. Simpson on December 4, 2001, while his home was being searched.
Credit:<br>Getty Images
O.J. Simpson on December 4, 2001, while his home was being searched.
Credit:
Getty Images
Strange trouble
Over the last several decades of his life, former football star O.J. Simpson got himself into a truly wide-ranging set of difficulties. After the killings of his ex-wife and her friend, “the Juice” led police on his infamous white Bronco freeway chase (1994), was charged with murder (1994), was acquitted of murder (1995), was sued for “wrongful death” (1996), was found liable for “wrongful death” (1997), defaulted on his California mortgage (1997), had his Heisman Trophy auctioned (1999), and eventually moved to Florida (2000), which had strong laws protecting homes and pensions from creditors and court judgments.
Then came a period of relative calm. Simpson avoided major legal drama, though he still managed to get charged with battery (2001—later acquitted) and for speeding in a boat through a manatee zone (2002—bench warrant issued, later reduced to a $130 fine).
Eventually, though, he headed back out into the storm. After trying to seize some sports memorabilia in Las Vegas he said had been stolen from him, Simpson was charged with robbery, kidnapping, and assault (2007), leading to his conviction (2008) and then a Nevada prison term that ran until his eventual parole (2017). He died of cancer in 2024.
I knew the basic parameters of Simpson’s life from national news stories over the years, of course. But not until this month did I stumble across a Simpson controversy I hadn’t known about: He was an accused satellite TV pirate who had been sued in federal court, much like the various music file-sharing defendants I covered so often during the 2000s.
The difference was that in Simpson’s case, his whole home had been searched by the feds—and with the help of the private company that would later sue him civilly.
The raid itself took place during that interlude of relative calm when Simpson lived on 112th Street in Miami. On December 4, 2001, Simpson’s home was one of 13 locations searched by the FBI after a two-year drugs-and-pirate-TV investigation. According to the LA Times, Simpson “was in a white bathrobe when he greeted officers” and “was not arrested” during the search.
No drugs were found, but Simpson’s home address had also come up during the investigation as one potentially linked to the purchase of satellite TV pirating equipment. So when law enforcement descended on his place, they didn’t do so alone. They brought with them James Whalen, then a senior director for DirecTV’s Office of Signal Integrity.
Whalen was there, he said later, because he was “asked by the FBI to accompany law enforcement” so that he could “assist in the identification of counterfeit or illegal materials associated with the theft of telecommunications services.”
And he found some.
Countermeasures
DirecTV records indicate that Simpson had maintained a subscription from 1995 into 1998. At the time of the raid, though, he had no “legitimate DirecTV account at his Florida residence,” DirecTV said. Yet when Whalen walked through Simpson’s home that day, he found two DirecTV receiver/descrambler units (also known in the industry as “IRDs”) hooked up to televisions.
For these descramblers to...